


the ballad of bonnie and clyde

by anyastasia



Category: Legend of Zelda, four swords manga
Genre: Angst, Based on a podcast, Death, M/M, bonnie and clyde - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23341252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyastasia/pseuds/anyastasia
Summary: a mailman named vio has dreams with a waiter named shadow. shadow dies.
Relationships: Vio/Shadow
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	the ballad of bonnie and clyde

He was a mailman, and a simple one at that. He took the same unremarkable route each day, strolling along through the small town to drop mail in boxes and slip envelopes through slots in doors. It was a decent paying job, and he got to organize things, which was his favorite pastime besides reading. The only thing he didn’t appreciate was the fact that the bag he carried all of his mail in weighed at least twenty-five pounds. 

Each day he stopped at the same diner to have lunch. The staff knew him well and most of the time could guess his order before he even sat down at a booth - a salad with house dressing, a large Pepsi and curly fries. His favorite. 

One day a new waiter came to take his order. He was pretty. Dark violet hair spilled down into a dark face and crimson eyes. He had his hair tucked back into a black cap and hastily scribbled down the mailman’s order. He knew that the waiter was new because he didn’t know his order. 

The mailman glanced at the name that was embroidered onto his shirt.  _ Shadow.  _

Shadow smiled at him when he brought him his curly fries. “Have you ever tried the cinnamon rolls here?” He piped up. The mailman was a bit surprised. No one ever really spoke to him here. 

He set down his drink. “I can’t say I have,” he admitted. 

The waiter beamed. “They’re awfully sweet,” he said. “Maybe you should come by in the mornings sometime and have some.”

The mailman took this information in stride. So the next morning, he walked into the diner hours before his normal time and sat at the front counter instead of retreating to the farthest booth from the door. 

The handsome waiter was there, ready to serve him. He grinned as he handed the mailman a warm, fresh cinnamon roll. 

The routine fell into place like clockwork. The mailman would come into the diner early in the morning for a cinnamon roll and coffee. The handsome waiter would always be there waiting for him, and he would read him his poetry. 

It was only the fourth time that the mailman went to the diner that the waiter even asked if he would like to hear some. The mailman eagerly agreed. He liked seeing the waiter flush with pride whenever he talked to him. 

So the next day, the waiter brought with him a scrap of paper on which he had written a hasty poem. He glanced at a mailman a bit shyly before he began. 

_ As long as I stayed on the island _

_ And heard confidence tales from the gals, _

_ There was only one interesting and truthful, _

_ It was the story of Suicide Sal. _

_ Now Sal was a girl of rare beauty, _

_ Though her features were somewhat tough, _

_ She never once faltered from duty, _

_ To play on the up and up. _

_ Sal told me this tale on the evening _

_ Before she was turned out free, _

_ And I’ll do my best to relate it, _

_ Just as she told it to me. _

The mailman listened intently, surprised when the waiter stopped on the apparent cliffhanger. 

“Where’s the rest?” He asked. 

The waiter blushed. “It’s not finished yet,” he said. “I’m...waiting for a bolt of inspiration.”

The mailman smiled. He liked that. 

Each time he stopped in, the waiter would have a new bit of the poem written. Sometimes it would be just a single verse, and sometimes it would be a complete poem in itself. Sometimes he didn’t have anything, but they talked all the same. The waiter would lean across the countertop on his elbows, eagerly reading out the words he had written. The mailman adores the way his red eyes lit up whenever he read his work. 

The mailman had fallen in love. He was sure of it. 

One day, the mailman stopped in to find the waiter waiting at the counter, but something was wrong. He looked sad. 

“What’s the matter?” He asked as he sat down. 

The waiter raised his head to look at the honey-haired mailman. “I finished the poem,” he said solemnly. 

The mailman sat forward eagerly. “Why are you sad?” He asked. “Haven’t you been working on this for so long?”

The waiter sighed, unrolling the paper he held. “Yes,” he said sadly. “Yes, I have.”

He read the last few lines of the poem. 

_ They don’t think they’re tough or desperate _

_ They know the law always wins _

_ They’ve been shot at before, but they do not ignore _

_ That death is the wages of sin. _

_ Some day they’ll go down together _

_ And they’ll bury them side by side _

_ To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief _

_ But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde. _

The mailman was silent for a long time. 

“Who is Bonnie and Clyde?” He asked after a while. He took a sip of his coffee. 

The waiter folded the paper away and tucked it into his apron. “Oh, just some made up names, you know,” he said wistfully. 

They had no conversation that day. The end of the poem seemed to be the end of  _ them.  _ The mailman wasn’t sure what to think as he left the diner that day to go deliver the mail. 

The next day, he entered the small diner to a wrench in his entire life. 

The waiter was gone. He was replaced by an older woman, one who certainly did not have poetry and did not have a warm cinnamon roll ready for him. 

The mailman asked about the handsome waiter. 

The old waitress rolled her eyes. “Oh, he split,” she drawled. “Ran off with the love of his life, the way I heard it. Nothin’ but trouble, young folk like them scamperin’ off to do no good. Especially his lot.”

The world felt unnatural and strange around the mailman. A solid part of his puzzle had just become loose. 

He left the diner that day with too many questions that he figured would never be answered. 

Four years later, the same mailman stood on a hill, enclosed in a copse of bushes. He stared down at the empty road that twisted and turned beneath him. He had a gun in his hand and an agenda on his mind. 

He was no longer a mailman. He was a sheriff. And he had been tasked with an impossible goal. 

Perhaps not impossible. Death was very simple - a pull of a trigger and a bullet through the head. Six feet under the dirt within the week. Nice and neat. 

The sheriff now had a team. A close bond of three other young men, all wanting a taste of glory. One, a chivalrous young heir who wanted to be known in the world. Another, a hot-headed city boy who wanted nothing more than to pick a fight. The last, a sweet, loving farm boy who was unfit for the team, but how could one say no to that lovable face?

They had been waiting for their target to arrive for hours now. The sheriff had carefully tracked the bandit’s maneuvers, and was sure they would be coming down this road any moment. They were just bandits, just another pair terrorizing the country. But the sinking feeling in the sheriff’s stomach made him want to throw down his gun and resign. 

A hum of a motor. A flickering in the trees down the road. The bandits had arrived. 

The sheriff hefted his gun. He had ordered his posse to not stop shooting until the car had stopped, and they weren’t ones to disobey orders. 

The car swerved into view. The sheriff felt sick. He did not know why. 

“Fire,” he said softly. 

The gunfire was so loud that the sheriff could barely hear anything. Smoke erupted from the car as bullets bounced off. The sheriff heard a hysterical scream, and then nothing as the car screeched to a halt in a ditch, nearly turning over. 

The sheriff approached the car quietly, his posse in tow. He kept his gun out and ready, just in case by some miracle the bandits had survived the gunfire. He crept around the side of the car, peering inside at the front seats. 

The ringing in his ears was not from the gunfire. He felt his whole body go numb. 

Four years ago, he has sat at a diner with a handsome waiter who had dreams of going to university and getting a degree in writing so he could pursue a career in poetry. The sheriff had been a mailman, a simple man with no dreams higher than raising a quiet family who would have an unremarkable life. 

But when he had met that waiter, his unextraordinary life had become  _ extraordinary.  _

He thought about that poem the waiter had written over the time that he had known him. He thought about the beginning, the middle, and the end. 

It was harsh that the sheriff did not know that the poem was about the waiter’s own dreams. 

The sheriff stared down at the face of the waiter, the ones whose dreams had flown higher than eagles, who turned to a life of crime and murder instead. The one who wanted his name to be known so bad that he would risk everything and anything for it. 

The mailman had loved a waiter, and a sheriff had killed a bandit. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off of the true story of bonnie and clyde, and the way I wrote it was based off of an episode of the podcast “The Way I Heard It” by Mike Rowe. it’s an amazing historical podcast and I definitely recommend it :)


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